Guest Post: Carlos Barcelo

Carlos is one of Chris' Summer 2010 Professional Speaking students. This is his second guest post. Here he writes about virtual communication.

Virtual communication is already changing our daily lives and maybe we haven’t noticed it. We use it every time we use Skype, MSN or email. It is also present in the workplace with teleconferencing and other electronic tools that help people to communicate instantly with others wherever they are.

In fact, many companies are implementing virtual communication to replace real life events. A report by Market Research Media from May 2010 showed that the market of virtual conference and the trade show market will grow to $18.6bn over the next five years from almost nothing today.

The reason for this promising future increase in the market is due to the many advantages of virtual communication and in how it increases productivity and reduces costs to companies of all sizes. Some of the main benefits of virtual communication are:

o Eliminates travel times.
o Reduces the cost of meetings and conferences.
o Allows many people to communicate at the same time from different parts of the world
o Reduces the cost of training sessions with virtual training

However, many people believe that virtual communication cannot replace real life communication and in some cases that is true. For instance, when it comes to meetings, a real meeting brings more interaction among the participants. When you are present you have the chance to see more gestures and non-verbal communication among the participants. Also, people are most focused in what is going on in the meetings when they are actually in a room, since they can’t do anything else but participate. In virtual conferences people still want to review their email or a presentation while in the conference, or they might be interrupted by someone stepping in their offices.

In my personal experience, I had many phone and sometimes video conferences when I worked in Citigroup back in Chile. I had to talk to people from different parts of the world and interact with them on a daily basis. It was very interesting to see how natural it was for everyone and even for me after a few months in the company. I felt that the people I used to talk were present somehow in the office. But I have to say that when people would travel to Chile from other countries to have real life meetings, it was a better experience of communication and meetings were more productive. After those encounters, I would feel more connected to them and that improved communication with them afterward.

Virtual communication is a great way of saving cost and time without the need of traveling and it really increases the productivity of the companies, but people still need to meet with each other. Technology may help, but I don’t think it will ever be as good as real life interaction.